VITAL SIGNS | DISPARITIES; Clinical Trials Found to Bar Gay People

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Published: March 23, 2010

Gay men and lesbians are barred from taking part in many clinical trials that deal with sexual functions and occasionally from other studies as well, researchers are reporting.

Writing in last week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, the study's authors say that the scientific rationale for the exclusions, if any, is not at all clear. ''Researchers should be held to careful scientific reasons,'' they add, ''when they develop exclusion criteria that are based on sexual orientation.''

As part of the study, the investigators explored the government database ClinicalTrials.gov for trials in the United States whose descriptions included the terms ''couples,'' ''erectile dysfunction'' or ''hypoactive.'' (Hypoactive sexual desire disorder is diagnosed in people who lack interest in sex.) Out of 243 such studies, 37, or 15 percent, explicitly excluded gay men and lesbians.

As for other trials, a search of asthma studies found none that excluded gay people. But some studies of how families cope with illness did -- including one that required that participants be ''in a reciprocal relationship with a person of the opposite sex.''

The new paper's lead author, Brian L. Egleston, a biostatistician at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said the trend was disconcerting, though he said some studies might simply be continuing to use exclusion criteria from earlier studies. ''There is likely a copy-and-paste component of this going on,'' he said.